Reciprocation: A running story
by lizzpercush
Summary: Ino had absolutely no idea what she was getting herself into the day Sakura burst into the flowershop all up in a tizzy.


**Reciprocation: A running story**

* * *

It was a lovely day in Konoha. The weather was brilliant. The season was turning from winter to spring with the leaves growing again and shining a bright green as the sun gently shone down to warm and kiss the bare skin exposed by civilians in relief of winters end. It was the perfect day to go cloud watching, eat ramen, or just plain loaf around outside.

Lucky Ino was stuck behind the counter to her parents' flower shop working (suffering) as she heard the children's blissful laughter outside and saw all the free, not working people strolling about in that oh so cursedly bright sunshine. Ino resented the sun today.

Business was doing well. It was spring. Love and romance was in the air which meant parties, weddings, engagements, romantic dates, the wooing of ladies, and all these led back to flowers, and Ino's unfortunate indentured service in the flower shop. The work was interesting though, a hotspot for information, great for picking up potential couples, lovers quarrels, who's ill and who's well, the latest births in the village, who's getting married to whom, the hottest parties, and more.

Currently, Ino was bored out of her mind. Although business as a whole was booming, the flower shop had hit its lull in traffic for the day. Her last customer had been Kiba and Akamaru coming in for flowers. The pair had settled on a small bouquet of baby's breath. The occasion she learned, was a new litter of ninja pups, and the Inuzuka clan was holding a minor party at their kennels. Kiba had gotten flowers to congratulate the mother. Dog lovers.

That had been two hours ago, and since then the only human life in the store was Ino. She was seriously contemplating propping herself up, using her clan jutsu to take over an unsuspecting bystander, and escape the terror. But sadly, Ino was a responsible kunoichi.

It was then when Ino was bored out of and beyond her mind that Sakura came in, a pack of nerves, stutters, and hand wringing. Ino proceeded to wring the story out of Sakura. She had no idea what she was getting into.

Sakura's entrance had been spectacular. She had thrown open the flower shop door sending the bell into grand tintinnabulations. Then Sakura had gotten right up into Ino's face and started rambling incoherent nonsense while desperately babbling about love and can't say, and other words running along those generic lines.

Well, Ino, at her friend's frazzled entrance, had closed the shop for the day (as if the ghost town would miss her), had taken her friend by the hand, and led her out the door and into the streets to a small outdoors café, where she ordered a pot of tea, paid for it, and let the waitress know they were not to be disturbed. Then with patience, a calm voice, and a constant supply of tea the story came out.

Sasuke had told Sakura he loved her. Sakura, it seemed, was in shock.

"H-he s-said l-loves m-me," Sakura stuttered, coherency escaping her. Her hands were finely trembling causing the tea in her cup to slosh around like a miniature tsunami.

Ino could only inwardly sigh at her friend's naïveté. Sasuke had been dating the girl for a year and a half now. After six months, Sakura should have seen it coming.

The Uchiha, Ino grudgingly admitted, despite having lost his parents at an early age and having been an emo avenger of his clan, knew how to treat a lady as the lady she was, and that was moving slowly, while getting to know the lady's mind first before anything else. Ino couldn't help but privately wonder if the Uchiha had taken gentlemen lessons from the Hyuugas when he returned.

She had watched the progression of the two's relationship as a bystander. The occasional spars had led to friendly chats. The friendly chats turned to discussions which carried over to coffee, and coffee led to dinner and an afternoon at the park until the two were dating.

Then the gifts had started. They were small gifts, a flower, a note, listening to the pink haired medic's chiding as she patched him up after a particular brutal mission enabling him to make it to the hospital conscious.

Not only did Ino hear about Sakura and Sasuke's relationship from Sakura, but from Naruto when he came in every now and again with a poor almost unconscious and very red Hinata. Along with an explanation of why Hinata was on the brink of fainting (heat exhaustion Naruto concluded hence why he would bring her to an air conditioned area) Naruto would also bring the latest info about Sakura and Sasuke.

Naruto had taken it upon himself to be the unofficial chaperone for the couple (stalker as Ino more aptly labeled him). Where did Hinata factor into all this? Naruto had successfully recruited Hinata to join him in his _chaperoning_ of his teammates if the circumstance ever occurred that the Uchiha caught on to the Uzamaki's chaperoning (stalking), and tried to escape. Hinata would then use her byukagen to locate the missing pair and let the sta—chaperoning continue (Ino was personally going to give those two, the Hyuuga and the fox boy, two years before Naruto discovered he liked her, and she liked him).

Also, Ino was more often then not behind the counter when Sasuke came in for flowers for Sakura. That had been Ino's first sign he loved Sakura. He was being thoughtful and sweet.

"So, Sasuke said he loved you," Ino said the question in her voice as she idly stared at her nails while waiting for clarification from Sakura. Sakura hastily bobbed her head up and down in an affirmative. "Are you really surprised with this development?" Sakura gave a quick shake of the head. Good, at least she wasn't totally clueless.

"Ok, so other then Sasuke being sentimental, what's got you on the edge?" Ino asked.

"He said he loved me!" Sakura exclaimed.

"Ooh-Kay…"

"And I can't say it back!"

Bingo. "Do you love him?" Ino asked rather curiously although she already knew the answer.

"YES!"

Ino didn't doubt her. This was Haruno Sakura after all.

"Then what's the problem? You two are engaged aren't you? And are going to be married, when's the date again?"

"Next April on the 27th,"

"In about a year you will be Mrs. Sakura Uchiha. What's wrong with telling your fiancé you love him?"

"I-I just. When he's looking at me and our hands are entwined all these butterflies start appearing en masse and kick up a violent storm in my stomach. And then he's looking at me, and he cares, and I panic! The words refuse to come, and I am struck speechless, mute, dumb. It's gotten to the point where I see him and freeze."

"Sakura, you love him. You are going to be married to him. It's okay to say you love him, and he probably already knows you do."

"I know, but I'd like to be able to say it."

"It sounds to me like you're scared which is ridiculous. My best friend is not some 12 year-old gennin, and the only reason you aren't a jounin is because you were on an A-ranked mission for a month in the Lightning Country during this year's jounin exams. You aren't scare of anyone and certainly not your future husband. You are going to bear the Uchiha fan one day and will bear it proudly."

"Yeah, yeah," Sakura said. The tea was soothing her nerves along with the pep talk. "I am a Konoha kunoichi! I am a Fan girl and proud of it. I am," Sakura paused mid-sentence as her earlier dread caught up with her, "totally out of my league."

Ino was staring mouth hanging down to the littered ground at Sakura. She had been getting through to Sakura. Sakura had possessed spirit (true, the fan girl part was a bit creepy since Sakura was technically considered a mature adult at 20 not a gennin).

"Sakura," Ino coached walking up to the very pale roseate and placing her hands on Sakura's shoulders. Sakura's head whipped up from her tea cup and her green eyes met Ino's blue ones with a lost puppy look, "repeat after me. I am Sakura Haruno-"

"I am Sakura Haruno-" she replied her mouth moving and forming the words as she still stared up at Ino with that lost puppy look.

"-Apprentice of the fifth hokage-"

"-Apprentice of the fifth hokage-"

"-With kick butt ninja abilities and a chunnin almost jounin to boot."

"-With kick butt ninja abilities and a chunnin almost jounin to boot."

The spark was returning to Sakura's eyes as her self-confidence began to return. Ino continued as Sakura began to perk up again. She could smell success in the air.

"I will not let any man deter me. I will hold my head high, and when I next see Uchiha Sasuke, I will walk up to him un-intimidated and will proudly say I, Haruno Sakura, your girlfriend, love you."

"I will not let anyone deter me. I will hold my head high," Sakura as if to prove her point stood up while Ino was silently cheering her own, "and when I next see Uchiha Sasuke," here Sakura's eyes widened as she stared at a certain someone down the street behind Ino, "I will turn tail and run away screaming like a little girl."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?!" Ino asked while slapping her forehead at the sudden reversal in Sakura's attitude. Ino reached out ready to grab her friend's shoulder and shake all the nonsense out of her, but Ino only met thin air.

Confused, Ino checked all around her. Up, down, ahead, behind, left, aha! And right. The distant scream and the trail of dust clued Ino in about where exactly Sakura had disappeared too. That and there was a certain fiancé of her friend walking down the street towards them was also another major clue. It was a good thing Ino had already paid for that tea.

* * *

Shikamaru, like most civilians in Konoha, had woken up, peered out the window and marveled at the exquisite weather the village was experiencing. Usually, the good weather was a drag because Shikamaru was stuck indoors with the cryptology team working while the sun and clouds mocked him from the window. However, miracle of miracles, today Shikamaru had the day off, and the weather was beautiful.

Out and about walking the streets of Konoha, Shikamaru headed towards a nostalgic bench from his childhood where he would watch clouds. On his way Shikamaru encountered Naruto who was, unsurprisingly, walking with the Uchiha.

"Naruto, Uchiha, what's up?" Shikamaru asked as the two party's paths met.

Naruto grinned, "Just enjoying the sunshine with Mr. Rain Cloud. Actually, Sasuke's more like a white fluffy cloud these past couple of months. Untroubled, un-emo-like, I thought I even caught a smile last week. I'm concerned."

"Maybe someone kidnapped our Sasuke, and replaced him with a kage bunshin that actually has a heart." Shikamaru drawled with a taunting smile aimed at the chicken butt.

For his credit, the words seemed to leave Sasuke unfazed (which only deepened the shock and suspicion) though Shikamaru caught the beginnings of a twitch forming.

"Anyway," Naruto said, "We're looking for Sakura-chan to see if she'll join us for ramen."

Shikamaru nodded, "I saw her at an outdoor café two blocks back on Cherry Tree Lane with Ino."

Naruto grinned, and Sasuke turned the corner down the street onto Cherry Tree Lane with Naruto on his heels. Shikamaru continued down the same street he was on before his memory caught up with him. The bench was located a street behind him which he had just walked past.

Turning around, Shikamaru resumed walking languidly toward his destination. It was a beautiful day. He hadn't watched the clouds as regularly as he had in the past, and it would be a nice break for enjoying some peace and quiet.

Shikamaru came back to the intersection of roads he had previously crossed. As it turned out the road he was about to cross was Cherry Tree Lane. Shikamaru's ears twitched. Was that…a scream? It was drawing closer by the sounds of it and was distinctly female.

Running down Cherry Tree Lane was a blur of pink, red, violet, and black. It was Ino's friend, Sakura, Shikamaru noted, which probably meant…

"Sakura!" Ino yelled as she chased after the pink blur, "You are being ridiculous. Get back here!"

Shikamaru watched the two go. Clouds, he thought, are much easier to understand then women.

* * *

Sakura hadn't been able to say those three words to Sasuke at the end of the day or the next. In fact, for the next week Sakura played a game of keep away and don't let Sasuke talk to me. Ino, bless her, had taken it upon herself to personally pep talk Sakura in the effort to give Sakura enough courage to say, "I love you," to her fiancé, Sasuke.

For the record, the pep talks worked up until the point where Sakura would catch a glimpse of spiky black chicken butt hair, and those gorgeous onyx eyes; then the pep talk flew out the window as Sakura turned brain dead or began her game of keep away again. By the end of the week Ino was at her wits end.

Currently, she was eating barbeque with her teammates. Correction, her teammates were the ones eating the barbeque while Ino was savagely mutilating a piece of barbeque beyond recognition with her chopsticks while muttering low, incoherent murmurings. Most of the eating had stopped at the table. Chouji because he was turning a little green from watching Ino's violence and Shikamaru because he was justifiably concerned.

"Ino, what's wrong?" he asked in that tired voice of his.

The meat's mutilation halted, to Chouji's relief, but he paled as Ino's icy blue eyes turned to meet her teammates. They were in for a world of trouble.

"How hard is it telling someone you love them?" To say the boys were shocked and slightly wary of the topic was an understatement. "How is it hard to say I love you? HOW?"

Shikamaru recovered first, "I suppose depending on the person and their emotional state of mind some may have more trouble then others."

Ino let out a very unfeminine snort of disbelief. "Ok, let me rephrase this. How hard is it to tell someone you are engaged to that you love them without turning into a pile of mute nerves in the process?" The mutilation of the meat resumed.

"Hey Ino," Chouji spoke up in an effort to say the perfectly good scrap of meat that was being riddled with holes, "are you going to eat that?"

The look in those blue eyes would have killed lesser men, but Chouji and Shikamaru thankfully had developed immunity to Ino's nastier moods. It wasn't often that Ino became so bothered nowadays that she would dissolve into a prickly cactus of a kunoichi, but old habits died hard and it spared the two shinobi.

"No, take it,"

Chouji quickly snatched up the poor piece of barbeque before Ino could further rekill the already dead piece of cooked meat. Shikamaru being the genius with an IQ over 200 finally caught onto what exactly was troubling his blonde-haired teammate.

"So Sakura still hasn't openly said to the Uchiha she loves him. I don't see why she has too. Anyone, but those blind fools that are his fan girls, can look at those two and tell Sakura genuinely loves him, and I can guarantee you that Sasuke knows she loves him as well."

"It's complicated; now any ideas?" Ino barked out her quills slightly lowering as she began to calm down just a wee bit.

Chouji was still chowing down on that piece of barbeque, so he couldn't reply. Shikamaru, well, he wasn't saying a word.

"And you're supposed to be my friends," Ino said fuming and began eyeing another piece of barbeque rather dangerously. Chouji and Shikamaru exchanged glances. Both acted swiftly. Chouji grabbed Ino, and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes while Shikamaru paid the bill.

"Don't worry Ino," Chouji said to the squirming bundle of feminine rage as the two exited the restaurant shadowed by Shikamaru, "we're taking you home so you can take a nice, long nap."

* * *

With the support of her team, Ino continued to support and cheer on Sakura to say those three words to Sasuke. Ino tried everything: hidden mikes, cue cards, acting out the scene, pep talks, getting Sakura high on sugar AND caffeine (at such circumstances Sakura was as good as drunk, and would sing like a bird about anything and everything on her mind) then setting her on Sasuke.

Heck, she even sent Sakura over to _Lee_ for pointer on how to "express the passion and fires of the blooming flowers of her youthful love". Ino wasn't quite sure Sakura had forgiven her for that particular experience.

But it wasn't until a month later that Sakura finally told Uchiha Sasuke, her boyfriend, or more accurately, her fiancé, that she loved him. She was in the hospital at the time.

Oh no, she wasn't injured and neither was Sasuke. Nope, no romantic setting was held for those three simple words. No desperate battle scenes had occurred where the only certain future was death at the hands of the enemy as the ninja gave their last farewells and pledges of eternally transcendent love before proceeding to fight to the last ounce of consciousness suffering massive nearly fatal wounds and major blood loss before finally slaying the last enemy nin and dropping into the dark oblivion of unconsciousness.

Nope, that had not happened. Oddly enough or not so oddly since Sakura was a medic nin, Sakura was visiting a patient in the hospital who had been rushed into the ER the previous day in the wee hours of the morning straight from a mission. This particular patient had been in the hypothesized dangerous battle situation when complications had occurred. Of all the times for an appendix to start announcing to the world it was going to rupture, it had to be during the time Ino had been swapping mental awareness with a rouge nin.

The sudden pain had slingshot Ino straight back to her mind and proper body, and had immobilized her so that when she fell out of her snipers point at the top of the 10 story tree, she couldn't do anything to save herself. Fortunately, by that time, Shikamaru and Chouji (her team members for this particular mission) had sufficiently taken out the rest of the nin and had completed the mission, so that when she did come hurtling out of the sky, fighting back a cry for the intense pain she felt, Chouji was free to super size himself and catch her.

Sakura had just come from the Hokage Tower after reporting back with Team Kakashi, plus Sasuke, over their mission. Tsunade, knowing of the friendship between the two girls, had informed Sakura after the mission report of Ino's condition.

Now as Sakura silently entered room 213 she could see the sleeping forms of a plump ginger haired Akimichi warrior, and the pineapple haired Nara. She had a need for silence since it was only 3:51 in the morning. The moon shining gently out the window spilled just enough light in the room to highlight the sleeping blonde asleep in the hospital bed.

Using the skills of the ninja she was, Sakura dropped off a vase with fresh cut cosmos straight from her own garden onto a side table. Sakura let out a sigh of relief as she made her way back to the doorway. The surgery which had occurred the previous day had been a successful removal of the non-ruptured appendix. All Ino had to do now was recover and take it easy before she was allowed to get back to her life as a ninja.

A large, calloused hand slid into Sakura's smaller, slightly softer, but still calloused hand.

"Now that you are sure she's alive, may we go?" the deep baritone purred from behind her.

"Sasuke," Sakura chided, "don't be so heartless. She's my friend."

"And a bad influence on you. You've been spending more time with her in the past month then previously, and you have been growing increasingly odder with each passing day. Besides, it's three in the morning almost four, an ungodly hour to be up, especially after a mission as strenuous as ours. You should be back in your apartment sleeping not haunting hospital rooms." Sasuke chided right back just as softly as she had, "Now may I have the honor of escorting you home?"

Sakura melted. He was being so thoughtful tagging along behind her to make sure in her almost drunken like state from the lack of sleep and a stressful mission that she didn't hurt herself or was harmed. And he was in worse shape then she was. Finally, the words she had so desperately wanted to say bubbled up and out of her mouth as her lack of sleep shot down her restraints and sense of reason.

"I love you," she whispered as she began to let herself drown in those dark onyx eyes. Then she slumped forward right onto Sasuke as her sleep deprived system declared enough was enough and hit the automatic shut-down button.

She didn't fall far. Sasuke had easily caught her before shifting her sleeping form so he was cradling her as he made his way out of the hospital. He was headed toward a certain whiskered blonde haired teammate's apartment hoping that he had cleaned that messy place of his in the past week, and that the fox boy had two extra bedrolls available for the three's impromptu sleepover. Sasuke knew that he would soon be following Sakura's example by falling asleep, but he also knew he had enough energy to make it to Naruto's flat.

The hospital room was now empty except for the Ino-Shika-Chou trio, and that flower vase with the cosmos inside. Shifting under the sheets, Ino softly mumbled "Finally," before drifting off into a narcotic induced sleep.

From their different posts in the room both Shikamaru and Chouji exchanged another relieved look (much like the one that had passed between the two when the news of the successful removal of Ino's appendix, and that she was out of the woods and in recovery). Then all three ninjas resettled into a peaceful sleep devoid of panicky Sakura's and rampaging stress filled Ino's. And sugarplums danced in the three ninja's heads.


End file.
